Gender Discrimination ‘Root Cause’ of Stateless Children

Gender
discrimination is a “root cause” of stateless children (those having no official
nationality) according to a United Nations’ High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR)
report published Aug. 22.

Twenty-five
nations have laws in place that prevent parents passing nationality to their
children – all 25 restrict women, while three also prevent unwed men, from
doing so.

Seven nations –
Brunei Darussalam, Eswatini, Iran, Kuwait, Lebanon, Qatar and Somalia –
restrict women from passing nationality to their children with “no, or very
limited, exceptions” and no provisions to address the resulting statelessness.

Another 14 countries
– including Iraq, Liberia and Saudi Arabia – place such restrictions on mothers
but offer “some safeguards against statelessness,” while Mauritania also
restricts mothers but has “provisions [that] ensure that statelessness will
only arise in very few circumstances.”

Barbados,
Malaysia and the Bahamas do not allow mothers or unmarried men to confer
nationality to children while offering “some safeguards against statelessness.”

“Gender
discrimination in nationality laws places many children worldwide at risk of
statelessness and can result in wide-ranging violations of children’s rights,”
the report said, “including obstacles to family unity, freedom of movement, access
to education, healthcare and social services, the right to an inheritance and
freedom from child marriage, in addition to other hardships and rights
violations.”

Even in
countries without such laws, women often encounter discriminatory processes and
procedures that make it difficult to obtain official documentation for their
children.

The negative
impact of such nationality laws and restrictive practices is further
exacerbated by laws in over 50 nations that prevent women from conferring nationality
on their foreign spouses, which “threatens family unity and children’s ability
to know and be cared for by both of their parents.”

Several
real-life examples of the impact of nationality restrictions are provided in
the report.

These include information
about a stateless child in Brunei Darussalam (a small nation on the northern
coast of Borneo) born to a Malaysian mother and a stateless father, as well as a
Sudanese mother of seven whose husband, also Sudanese, died and left her unable
(until UNHCR intervened) to obtain documentation required for the children to access
certain educational opportunities.